


Persistence of a Dog Day

by Viktorye



Category: Naruto
Genre: Gen, KakaGai - Freeform, M/M, gaikaka, whatever tags you guys use for this stuff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-11
Updated: 2016-04-16
Packaged: 2018-06-01 13:51:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6522367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Viktorye/pseuds/Viktorye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kakashi's been feeling kinda depressed lately.<br/>Kakagai drabble stuff. Multi-chapter, eventually.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Cicada

There are no good times and there are no bad times. There are no times at all, really, other than the moments you spend looking out the window, waiting for the sun. It's hard to convince the world to turn any faster, and harder still to convince yourself you're content to be where you are. I think I read it in a book, but maybe someone said it to me once.

I can see it in the air, feel it in the small things. How sometimes I feel sick when I sit on the edge of my bed and see the thin sheen of dust on the floor. I can move it around, swept onto a piece of paper, out the door with the broom, into the vacuum, under the rug, but it's never really gone. It sits banked on the shelf between the books I never read. Where the window sill is too high to reach. But still I can smell it. Sense it all around. 

He says the smell is like home. Like sawdust and talcum powder, the beat of strong hands against the ground. The feeling of exhaustion after a good day, he says, smells like dirt. To me, it smells like unhappiness.

Everything bothers me. Everything aches.  
Why is that here? Why did I stay up so late, when I had work to do? Did I do a good enough job? Am I leaving a legacy? Did I remember to hang up the clothes to dry? I'm tired. I wish it wasn't me. 

He smiles, his eyes are honest and gleeful and he laughs. I lightly tap his knee to get his attention, and ask if he wants more coffee, when I feel the surge of his muscle. My finger tips twitch with the electric pain he feels under his smile and his bandages. I apologize, he says what, that he didn't feel a thing. "You surprised me, is all," ha ha, he laughs.

Gai is the worst liar I know. It annoys me, and I can't help wondering what he's smiling for. I resent it. Sometimes I hate that smile. I've known it all my life just as I've known him. Exuding confidence. It's comforting, when he tells you not to worry, and flashes his teeth and squeezes his eyes shut. But the worst thing about it is that it hasn't changed in all the years I've looked after him.

He sits outside, warm in the sun and humming with the cicadas. It's a Saturday, and Lee is on assignment in the Land of Waves. Gai watches his grandson, bounces him on his knee, like his dad used to do. The boy shows us a beetle he found. He's proud of his somersault and he's the spitting image of Lee. He challenges me to a race. Gai claps and shouts and is infuriatingly cheerful, and when I stand opposite him, and watch his face, I almost want him to be angry. I know. He wants nothing more than to be able to play in the grass. To use his legs, to run around, be a fool, and teach his boy the proper way to cartwheel.

I wish I could know why he refuses to let it bother him. What I wouldn't give to know the secret. Why is it that the smell hasn't seeped into him?

After a wakeful night indulging in books I sleep for sixteen hours and growl when he tugs open the blinds. 

"It's six o'clock..."

I swat his hand away when he tries to pull me off the sofa. Can’t I get ten minutes to myself? I grumble. You weren’t the Hokage. You don’t know how hard it was. I'm tired, I'm tired, I'm tired.

"I'm sorry," he laughs, and squeezes my arm. His grip is tight and I feel my skin throb from his touch long after he's gone away. He knows a bad day when he hears it and makes himself scarce. 

Two hours tick by on the clock overhead and eventually, as it often happens, I melt off into the carpet and move to his room, lingering in the doorway just where he can see me. 

Gai exercises his hands, cutting shapes from a ream of paper with a small blade and arranging the pieces into a mandala on a board in front of him. I make a sound, he doesn't hear, though he yelps sharply as his trembling hand slips and he jabs his finger with the tip of the knife. I swallow, and hum lowly from the doorway.

When he turns around, and sees the state of me. Somehow sleepless after sleeping all day. Hair a mess. Surly. Lazy.  
He smiles at me.

His eyes are intensely dark, and the vulnerability I feel when they look me over is different somehow. In the fading light his whole body seems soft, my heartbeat aligns with the ticks of the clock, I try to speak, but eventually I end up back in bed, staring at the ceiling. 

I hate that smile.  
The one that appears when I've gone to bed. The one that presses against my face and kisses and shoves and pulls until I acknowledge it. The one that tries to remind me to smile. The one that does the dishes, the laundry, the cooking, the work, the lessons, the papers when it can't even stand on its own. I hate the illogical curl of those lips into a grin which should be a snide remark, but is instead a kind word. That should be a comment on my uselessness. But instead is a reminder of my worth. I hate how confusing it feels. 

I want him to hate me, too.

But he doesn't.


	2. Drip

I'm getting old. 

Nearly fifty, now. Lines run deep under my eyes and around the corners of my upturned lips, and when I look in the mirror I see my father gazing back with dull eyes, dark and lidded. Would you believe it, Sakumo? He's gotten so big, and surpassed you in age. In my mind I change the subject - for some reason the thought of it makes me feel unconscionably sad. 

Fog fills up every corner of the bathroom. An hour is long enough, I decide, turning the faucet to still the flow of scalding water cascading over me from the mildewed shower head. He is there as I push back the mist gathered on the medicine cabinet. He is there as I pass a razor over my jaw to glean away the suggestion of a beard from my face. He looks in the mirror and spies a shock of white hair bobbing up and down behind him, pulling at his robes, asking if it can try, it wants to be like Dad, it wants to shave.

With smiling eyes, he sighs, and with a wink, hums, "maybe when you're as old as me."

I look and look, but there is nothing to occupy the space behind my shoulders. I only see my blanched feet, toes splayed, pressed against the cool tile floor. A black smudge leading from the door to the foot of the bath. Traces of plaster lining the edge of the wall beneath a newly installed handrail. I wish I could scrub them away.

The journey from his bed to his chair is becoming an increasingly arduous one. Still, I'm thankful it's July - the colder months put us both out of sorts.

Gai rolls through the door, hot and slick with sweat after a long day of being jovial. He smells like grass and pork buns, dust and soil drip down his neck and I wonder how a wheelchair-bound man could possibly get so dirty.

"What's the news?" I ask, crouching to help him remove his socks, though he stops me with his forefinger and insists on doing it himself. 

"Tenten," he masks his groans of pain as he straightens his spine, proudly dangling his socks in both hands, and before I can ask if he's alright, continues, "is being promoted! The Research Institute wants her to head off some new weapons division."

As he speaks I disrobe him and toss the sweaty laundry into a pile in the corner to think about tomorrow. Gai is sticky. I've long since forbidden him from wearing his jumpsuits on days when he knows he'll be sweating, as it's nearly like peeling off a second skin when it comes time to bathe. Still, I wonder what it is he does with all the extra leotards I find folded into the laundry, and I suspect he wriggles into them when I'm asleep.

"I'm so proud of her."

He hooks his arm behind my neck, I bend to shovel my forearm behind his knees and I pause when he cries out, though he bites his lip and reassures me that it's fine. My right hand tightens on his naked flesh and I can feel the slightest radiation of pain through his lower spine.

I gently lower him into the water and his whole body seems to relax, if only for a moment. He hums and sighs and tells me he feels good, and I smile as I methodically massage his back, though everyday I can see it getting worse. The edema in his legs. The paleness of his feet. How he no longer reacts when I move to rub his thighs, and opens his eyes to be sure I'm still in the room. 

He tells me he feels better, but the deadweight of his legs in my arms suggests otherwise. He tells me he's happy, but the deep fissures that cover his body are burning him from the inside out and leaving soot in the water. He tells me not to worry, but I'm watching him die.

A drip. Blood spreads and disappears in the water. 

I dry his tired skin and help him into bed. He falls asleep the minute his head meets the pillow, and I return to the bathroom to pick up the laundry, though I catch my reflection in the mirror.  
I must have nicked my mole again, as a little line of red is dripping down my chin. 

When I go to bed my mind is restless. I turn over and study his face thoroughly, as a deep knot in my gut twists.

One late afternoon, I know, having had no one wake me, my eyes will open to the dying light of the day and I will turn to discover only a pile of ash beside me.


End file.
